The Greek's Pregnant Bride

‘Show me what?’

He straightened his shirt, then turned back to face her. ‘I’ll take you to meet her. You can see for yourself why I don’t want my mother anywhere near our wedding.’

* * *

The car came to a stop outside an immaculate two-storey house in a quiet Athenian suburb.

No sooner had the engine been turned off than Christian got out, not bothering to wait for the driver to open the door for him.

The entire drive had been conducted in silence, Christian sitting ramrod-straight, only the whiteness of his knuckles betraying what lay beneath his skin.

It was a demeanour Alessandra had never seen from him before. It unnerved her.

That he’d cancelled his first appointment of the day had unnerved her even more; that, and the grim way he’d said, ‘Let’s get it over with.’

followed him out

with short white hair appeared at the door, lines all over her weathered face, her thin lips clamped

heel and walked back inside, leaving the door

a strong smell of bleach pervading

about it. What could have been a beautiful

of hiding her disdain for Alessandra, refusing her hand when Christian introduced them, and looking through her when Alessandra said, ‘Hárika ya tin gnorimía,’— ‘pleased to meet you’—a phrase she’d

gathered together in the immaculate kitchen, where the stench of bleach was even stronger. No refreshments

pulse in his jawline throb. When he replied, his answers were short but measured. At one point he seemed to be the one doing

in such a poisonous atmosphere as

something almost unhinged in Elena Markos’s demeanour. Her eyes were the same blue as Christian’s but were like

made her skin feel as icy as Elena’s eyes. But Christian couldn’t leave it to imaginings. He’d lived it,

eschewed any form of emotional

the name Markos stood for guts and determination but had not appreciated then exactly how great his determination must have been,